Searching American Memory for Women's History Materials |
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Looking for women's history materials online at the Library of Congress? A wide array of digitized primary sources highlighting aspects of American women's livesincluding manuscripts, pamphlets, books, maps, photographs, moving images, and sound recordingsare accessible through the Library's American Memory Historical Collections Web site. The American Women Research Guide provides links to some of these digital materials, but you will find many more by searching American Memory directly.
Titles of some American Memory sites readily suggest that they contain information about women:
The discussion below will help you navigate American Memory resources with a special eye towards researching women's history effectively online. It also addresses some frequently asked questions about using American Memory materials, pointing to sources of further information. Chances are that as you travel through the American Memory site, you will encounter intriguing and informative materials that you didn't even know you wanted. [Top] What Are You Searching?Keep in mind that the Library's online collections are representative rather than comprehensive, and that they principally contain collections of primary materials. These materials are generally grouped by collection and are accompanied by special features to provide context for researchers and aid in the interpretation of the items. What you won't find here are text-book style summaries of historical persons, events, or movements. When you type search strings into an American Memory search page, it is helpful to understand what data is being searched. Generally, there are two types of data that American Memory searches:
* With few exceptions, bibliographic records, rather than full texts, are used for cross-collection searches (see the American Memory help document, What American Memory resources are included in this search? for further information about cross-collection searching). * At this time, Special Presentations and other contextual materials accompanying the collections are generally not included in American Memory searches, although they may be searched using the Advanced Search feature that links from the Library's home page. * When you are searching a single collection that offers both a "Descriptive Information" and a "Full Text" search, you should try using both types of searches for maximum results. [Top] How Are You Searching?There are several ways to search in American Memory. For best results you will want to try a number of the options described below.Try cross-collection and single-collection searchingIn most cases, you will want to start with a cross-collection keyword search before moving to more specific searches or "browses" within individual collections. Use the cross-collection search to identify collections with materials of interest to you. Another way to locate collections of interest is to use the Collection Finder categories (Broad Topics, Original Format, Time, Place, Library Division, and so forth), which will provide a list of collections relevant to the category. Note that searches started from A Collection Finder page limit results to the collections listed on that page. Focusing on a single collection will enable you to take advantage of special features such as:
When searching individual collections use both "Search Descriptive Information" and "Search Full Text," if availableMost American Memory collections offer keyword searching. A keyword search simply matches the words or phrases you enter to text associated with an item. The text may be in the bibliographic record ("Descriptive Information") or in the full text, depending on which type of search you choose. Keep in mind that searching full text for events, places, and people may uncover material relevant to you but peripheral to the main theme of the work (and therefore, not mentioned in the summary Descriptive Information).
Use keywords typical of the time period you are researchingParticularly when you are keyword searching the full text of items in a collection, try likely synonyms, keeping in mind the terminology of the time period you are researching and selecting the "match any of these words" option. Examples:Consult the American Memory help document, Choosing Search Words, and the Learning Page Synonym List for more ideas. Start with specific terms and then expand to more general terms if necessaryFirst try the specific names of the persons, organizations, or places you are researching. If you do not get enough results, add more synonyms or use broader subjects. Examples: Consult the American Memory help document Choosing Search Words for more ideas. [Top] Adjust search options to broaden or narrow your searchAmerican Memory's keyword search allows you to enter multiple words and gives you the option of searching at various levels of precision:
Example: See American Memory help documents Bibliographic Record Search Options and Full Text Search Options for further information. Take advantage of subject headings that gather related materialIn some collections, those who prepared the collection have assisted in identifying items with related subject matter or that take a similar form by including subject terms (e.g., Women--Employment) or genre terms (e.g., Diaries) in the bibliographic records. Sometimes these terms are taken from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), a standard list often used in library cataloging of books and other materials; sometimes the headings are drawn from other sources. One way to take advantage of these subject and genre terms is to consult the "browse by subject" pages included with many collections. If you find an item that seems applicable to your topic, you can also use the linked subject headings in its bibliographic record or other description to find any additional items assigned the same heading. The "Cataloging the Collection" or "Building the Digital Collection" documents accompanying each American Memory collection usually contain information about subject headings and other cataloging matters. For a discussion of subject and genre headings, in general, and how to find them, see Searching LC Catalogs. Use alternate display optionsAmerican Memory search results are displayed as a "List View" by default, but the "Gallery View" option is an important tool for multiformat research. Select the "Gallery View" button to see thumbnail images of visual materials and icons indicating the format of others. Gallery View can help you find a specific image quickly or visually sort your results by medium rather than by title or collection. [Top]When You Find Something--What Next?Bookmarking what you findWhen you search American Memory Historical Collections, the results are returned to you as a temporary Web page that displays only the links you have requested. These temporary search results last only a few hours before disappearing. If you find something in American Memory that you would like to revisit, you will need either to repeat the original search or to access and note what is known as the page's "permanent URL." For instructions on finding the permanent URL see Linking & Bookmarking in American Memory. Downloading materialsIf you find useful materials online, you may want to make a copy for yourself for further reference, either in the form of an electronic file or as a paper printout. Saving American Memory resources to your local hard disk (or a removable storage media such as a Zip disk or CD-RW) is fairly straightforward, although the details vary slightly depending on your browser and operating system. In all cases, one distinction is important.
For more on accessing the various file formats used in American Memory, see How To View. Printing materialsPrinting directly from your browser window will usually give you a useful working image, but in some cases you may wish to print a primary page image only, hiding from view the textual framing materials that American Memory associates with it. To do this you will need to download the images to your computer (see above) and open them in an imaging program such as the Windows Imaging accessory, or Photoshop. Multiple versions of the same image may be available. Because "dots per inch" vary widely between the typical computer screen and the typical printer, for quick printing or onscreen viewing you will want to use the ".jpg" version, but for high-quality printed copies, you may want to download and save the "high resolution" TIFFs where available. Citing American Memory resourcesMost of what you need to know about citing American Memory resources can be found on the Learning Page's Citing Electronic Sources. Not Finding What You Need?If, even after using the techniques suggested above, you do not find the number or kinds of materials you expect, it may be because they are not available on the American Memory site or because you need additional information to locate them. You might consider consulting:
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